I want to be able to read the content of pdf files. I need to do that with C on Linux.
The closer i can get to this was here but I think Haru can only create pdf and is not able to read them (not 100% sure).
PS: I only need the plain text from pdf
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Check out libpoppler. I've never used it work extracting text, just querying PDF attributes. It's pretty easy to use.
eduffy
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I think libpoppler is too "big" for what i want. It uses QT and other stuff that i think it is unnecessary. – Rui Carneiro Apr 21 '09 at 15:14
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Poppler has optional frontends for glib and Qt (to fit nicely into their object systems), but is not required. – eduffy Apr 21 '09 at 15:33
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Ok! I saw that it is already on Ubuntu repositories. I will take a look. – Rui Carneiro Apr 21 '09 at 15:47
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How well do you need to parse them? Just extracting strings should be relatively easy, fully accurate rendering is harder. Take a look at the source for evince or ghostscript?
This is for C++ but might be a good starting point for understanding PDF structure http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/ExtractPDFText.aspx (sorry wrong link before)
Martin Beckett
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Another possible, though I've never used it is VersyPDF. It claims to allow you to edit PDFs ... http://versypdf.sybrex-systems-ltd.qarchive.org/